In the second half of the 20th century, the world became a darker place.
Defying expectation and explanation, hundreds of instruments around the world recorded a drop in sunshine reaching the surface of Earth, as much as 10 percent from the late 1950s to the early '90s, or 2 to 3 percent per decade. In some areas like Asia, the United States and Europe, the drop was even steeper. Hong Kong saw a 37 percent decrease in its sunlight.
No one is predicting that it may soon be night all day. Still, the dimming trend -- noticed by a handful of scientists two decades ago, but dismissed at the time as unbelievable -- is now attracting wide attention. Research on global dimming and its implications will be presented next week in Montreal at a joint meeting of U.S. and Canadian geological societies.
James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said scientists had long known that pollution particles reflected some sunlight, but now they are realizing the magnitude of the effect. "It's occurred over a long time period, so it's not something that perhaps jumps out at you," he said. "But it's a large effect."
"In general, we don't really understand this thing that's going on," said Shabtai Cohen, a scientist in Israel's agriculture ministry who has studied global dimming for a decade.
Since the 1950s, hundreds of radiometers, the instrument to measure sunshine, have been installed worldwide.
At around the same time, Gerald Stanhill of the Israeli Agriculture Ministry noticed similar darkening trends in Israel. "I really didn't believe it," he said. "I thought there was some error in the apparatus."
Stanhill, retired and living in New York City, also found global dimming. In the 1990s, he wrote a series of papers describing the phenomenon.
In 2001, Stanhill and Cohen estimated the worldwide dimming averaged 2.7 percent per decade.
If 'global dimming' is anything remotely resembling reality, the least likely explanation that I can think of is a debris cloud 'hanging around' between the Earth and the Sun. Any amateur astronomer with a solar filter and an occulting disk would be able to see obvious evidence of it. Except I guess for the fact that it is *so secret*. Hey, I have a telescope. Maybe I can get in on the government hush-money gravy train! LOL!
The Earth has been struck by large, fast-moving objects many times in the past. There is plenty of evidence to suggest it.
Where this completely falls apart for me is that *this guy* has the *inside track* on *secret government information* and that all sorts of scientific organizations are being paid to cover it up. Additionally, *parties unknown* are conspiring to silence him.
He says that he used to 'work for the government'. The inference that we're supposed to draw is that he worked for them in a capacity where he'd have been a 'trusted member of the conspiracy of silence', so some sort of research scientist or national security advisor or intelligence type, right? Well, I used to 'work for the government', too. I was a US Marine. I guess I'm in the club of knowing where all of the UFOs are reverse engineered then, huh. Guess I must've been threatened or paid off. Well, I have no income at the moment, to I'll take the dough, hold the threats, thanks. Sheesh.
I watch conspiracy theorists like this, and have for many years. They're full of Kerry, on the whole. I do think that interesting and secret things do happen from time to time. When they do, they're usually more along the lines of the underwater cable-tapping in the Sea of Okhotsk, the lovingly crafted pipeline explosion in Siberia that was the result of the KGB having stolen software that was creatively re-engineered, or some of the incredible stunts pulled by SOG in various parts of SE Asia in the 60s and early 70s.
Yeah, we'll probably eventually get smacked with a flying mountain from deep space that's doing 30 kilometers/sec. Betcha a nickel that it ain't on any of the dates that this guy has guessed.